Saturday, July 3, 2021

Kevin McCarthy And The Radical Republican Spectrum

 

Greg Sargent writes about the dilemma facing spineless shitweasel House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Sedition-CA) after Speaker Pelosi backed him into a corner on the January 6 select committee.  Key to McCarthy's problem is the involvement of Republican lawmakers in encouraging and covering for their violent paramilitary wing  :

Perhaps all this is best understood as a spectrum moving from “parliamentary” to “paramilitary.” Some Republicans fed the lies about Trump’s loss. Some supported sham lawsuits to overturn the results. Some voted to overturn Biden electors. Some state Republicans entertained sending rogue electors.

Some called on people to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally that produced the violence. Some now minimize and distort the attack, giving cover to a movement that actually did attempt to overturn the constitutional order through mob violence.

The committee’s investigation will inevitably shed light on the place of Republicans all along that spectrum, including any role that GOP lawmakers might have had in planning the rally and, possibly, communicating with Trump about what his true intentions for it were.  [snip]

It’s hard to see how McCarthy can avoid appointing Republicans who themselves fell somewhere on that spectrum. Yet if he appoints Republicans who treat the committee’s mission with the weight it deserves, that will also pose a huge problem. His lack of any obvious way forward itself illustrates how deeply implicated the GOP is in the very horrors that the committee is designed to illuminate.

The bungled handling of a vehicle for investigating the January 6 insurrection (Republicans could have had a 50/50 bipartisan 9/11- style commission where they would have had considerable leverage, but Moscow Mitch McConnell blocked it in the Senate) comes after months of Republicans supporting the fascist former guy in his election overturning delusions through lawsuits, then passing laws to restrict voting, then phony "audits," all accompanied by constant bleating from right- wing media. 

Say what you will about Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), but her willingness to be on the select committee was a serious nut punch to McCarthy and to every Republican seditionist eager to avoid accountability. The workings of the committee are likely to go on well into 2022, and every rock that needs to be lifted will be lifted, and every seditionist worm under those rocks will be exposed, and the reckoning will begin.


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